One for All
by eostby
Summary: Sometimes, even in the house of the just and loyal, you just need to get away, to be yourself. For the HPFC Gemstone Competition (Aquamarine)


**A/N: I don't own the Potterverse, and simply enjoy playing with J.K.'s characters. Any resemblances to canon you may see are simply coincidence. **

No one in Hufflepuff questioned why Susan Bones would wander off for long stretches of time. They assumed that she knew where she was going, and that she would come back soon enough. They knew that Susan had a lot on her mind, and only hoped the poor girl would find the answers she wanted. Even her best friend Hannah Abbott knew when Susan needed time by herself, and never questioned where she had gone.

Behind a door that often liked to pretend it was a wall, Susan Bones sat and thought about the world. She thought about what it meant to be the favorite and only niece of the head of Magical Law Enforcement in Britain. She thought about the schoolgirl crush of most of Hogwarts, the messy haired, green-eyed Boy-Who-Lived, Harry Potter. But mostly, Susan just enjoyed the peace and quiet of some time alone. While Hufflepuff was the house of loyalty, that didn't mean you had to be around everyone all the time. Each Puff had their own location of solitude outside the house, whether they admitted it or not. Susan was simply the most obvious about needing hers.

Susan liked coming to her room. As far as she knew, no one else in Hufflepuff had found this room before her. That made it uniquely hers and hers alone. Though since at least one Ravenclaw had apparently used it as a study room before, she could find out much about the history of Hogwarts and the world at large. Particularly important to Susan, she could find out details about Muggle society that would never be taught in their stuffy, out of date Muggle Studies class. It wasn't that Susan didn't like Muggles, she just hadn't had many opportunities to learn about them before now.

It also gave Susan a chance to update her Auntie Amelia on the weekly comings and goings of Hogwarts. While she was at Hogwarts for her education, she was also preparing to join the Auror force after school, and what better way to practice gathering information that keeping tabs on the school and its notoriously wily Headmaster? Dumbledore was well known for keeping information tightly under wraps, so anything Susan could find out would be a great help for her aunt. It wasn't that the Bones family didn't trust Dumbledore; far from it. Amelia simply believed that many of her cases and internal Ministry problems could be solved far more easily with some assistance from Dumbledore, at least more that what he currently gave them. Thus, it was up to Susan to get what information she could to help her aunt.

Susan looked up from her parchment when someone knocked on her wall/door. Answering the door, she found her best Slytherin informant (and future Auror partner, if Susan had the choice) Daphne Greengrass holding a sheaf of parchment.

"Latest from the Snake Pit, Daphne?" said Susan. Daphne rolled her eyes, but nodded. Susan grabbed the parchment, motioned Daphne to enter the room, and headed for the main desk in the room, where her other Hogwarts notes were stored.

Susan's eyes quickly traveled the parchment. "Hm, Malfoy bragging about his father's questionable deeds, Nott plotting against the whole school, Zabini still less informative than Dumbledore, and…really?" Susan looks up at Daphne, who nods quietly. "Crabbe and Goyle secretly planning to invest in the Muggle stock market? You mean those two actually have brains?"

"And may both be in possession of offers from the Unspeakables for future employment, but you didn't hear it from me," added Daphne. "If that concludes our weekly chat?"

Susan nodded while making a shoo-ing motion at Daphne, her eyes still glued to the parchment. After spending 5 minutes reading and re-reading the parchment to make sure all the information was accurate (and to allow for the shock that Crabbe and Goyle were intellectuals!), Susan added the latest parchment to her report for her aunt, cast a spell to merge the many separate parchments into one, rolled it and tied it to her owl's leg to send to London.


End file.
